18 examples of the spectacularly wrong predictions made around the first “Earth Day” in 1970

In the May 2000 issue of Reason Magazine, award-winning science correspondent Ronald Bailey wrote an excellent article titled “Earth Day, Then and Now” to provide some historical perspective on the 30th anniversary of Earth Day. In that article, Bailey noted that around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970, and in the years following, there was a “torrent of apocalyptic predictions” and many of those predictions were featured in his Reason article. Well, it’s now the 48th anniversary of Earth Day, and a good time to ask the question again that Bailey asked 18 years ago: How accurate were the predictions made around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970? The answer: “The prophets of doom were not simply wrong, but spectacularly wrong,” according to Bailey.

Here are 18 examples of the spectacularly wrong predictions made around 1970 when the “green holy day” (aka Earth Day) started:

1. Harvard biologist George Wald estimated that “civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind.”

2. “We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation,” wrote Washington University biologist Barry Commoner in the Earth Day issue of the scholarly journal Environment.

3. The day after the first Earth Day, the New York Times editorial page warned, “Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction.”

4. “Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make,” Paul Ehrlich confidently declared in the April 1970 issue of Mademoiselle. “The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years.”

5. “Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born,” wrote Paul Ehrlich in a 1969 essay titled “Eco-Catastrophe! “By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”

6. Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.”

7. “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness.

8. Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”

9. In January 1970, Life reported, “Scientists have solid experimental and theoretical evidence to support…the following predictions: In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution…by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half….”

10. Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”

11. Barry Commoner predicted that decaying organic pollutants would use up all of the oxygen in America’s rivers, causing freshwater fish to suffocate.

12. Paul Ehrlich chimed in, predicting in 1970 that “air pollution…is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone.” Ehrlich sketched a scenario in which 200,000 Americans would die in 1973 during “smog disasters” in New York and Los Angeles.

13. Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.” Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out. (Note: According to the most recent CDC report, life expectancy in the US is 78.8 years).

14. Ecologist Kenneth Watt declared, “By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate…that there won’t be any more crude oil. You’ll drive up to the pump and say, `Fill ‘er up, buddy,’ and he’ll say, `I am very sorry, there isn’t any.’”

15. Harrison Brown, a scientist at the National Academy of Sciences, published a chart in Scientific American that looked at metal reserves and estimated the humanity would totally run out of copper shortly after 2000. Lead, zinc, tin, gold, and silver would be gone before 1990.

16. Sen. Gaylord Nelson wrote in Look that, “Dr. S. Dillon Ripley, secretary of the Smithsonian Institute, believes that in 25 years, somewhere between 75 and 80 percent of all the species of living animals will be extinct.”

17. In 1975, Paul Ehrlich predicted that “since more than nine-tenths of the original tropical rainforests will be removed in most areas within the next 30 years or so, it is expected that half of the organisms in these areas will vanish with it.”

18. Kenneth Watt warned about a pending Ice Age in a speech. “The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years,” he declared. “If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age.”

Interesting. When union activists and others took over the Wisconsin state house a few years ago, staging a sit-in, they all wore red shirts. The media tried to provide cover for them, saying, ‘Oh look, they’re wearing Badger red, isn’t that harmless and cute’. (U of Wisc. school colors.) Every thinking person knew better.

Hardcore environmentalists don’t care what the Jury thinks. They have already reached a verdict, and intend to ban Juries along with everything else they don’t like and any people who disagree with them.

Let us not forget to give credit to one of the principle founders of Earth Day, Ira Einhorn, the man who a little later murdered his girlfriend for saying she might leave him, and put her body in a trunk in his apartment for 18 months. Then he fled to Europe for 20 years or so before he was finally located and extradicted back to serve prison time here, where I believe he still is.

Yes, a perfect representative of the Environmental movement – he believed people should be turned into compost, and he started with those closest to him.

No, he left her in the steamer trunk, right up until the police, armed with a search warrant, found her there and arrested Einhorn, who claimed he did not know where she was, had not seen her in months, etc.
Even though the odor of her rotting corpse was noticed by neighbors and passer’s-by.
How he was ever let out on bail is the big mystery to me.
He fled to a country which was well known to refuse deportation of accused murderers to countries with the death penalty. It took years to get him deported even after he was found, living a cozy life with his new girlfriend, who for some unGodly reason stuck with him even after learning the truth…although it seems she knew who he was from the start.

Those who can do, those who can’t teach and those that can’t teach consult :)
There was a great Dilbert cartoon years ago with the Dogbert character musing “I love to con people and I love to insult them … I’ll be a CONSULTant”

“By…[1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s.”

6. Ehrlich sketched out his most alarmist scenario for the 1970 Earth Day issue of The Progressive, assuring readers that between 1980 and 1989, some 4 billion people, including 65 million Americans, would perish in the “Great Die-Off.”

7. “It is already too late to avoid mass starvation,” declared Denis Hayes, the chief organizer for Earth Day, in the Spring 1970 issue of The Living Wilderness.

8. Peter Gunter, a North Texas State University professor, wrote in 1970, “Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa. By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.”

Well of course they weren’t taking into account of the increase in Carbon Dioxide which has enabled increased food production on our planet, in spite of some foolish efforts to eliminate the increase.

We are our own worst energy. We are more likely to engineer our demise by ruining our capitalist economies and succumbing to the left. Think of Venezuela!

It isn’t stupid. It was and currently is part of a marketing campaign to enrich themselves and their cause through hysteria. That campaign has been quite successful over these last 50 years. So while their predictions went horribly wrong, the real goal was met nevertheless. It’s always about the money.

No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby. link

The political reality is that most people are far too stupid to vote, as evidenced by the energy debacle in Ontario under Doltan McGuinty and Kathleen Wynn, and the election of Justin Trudeau in Ottawa and Rachel Notley in Alberta. Global warming alarmism is promoted by scoundrels and supported by imbeciles – there is no real global warming crisis.

Cheap, abundant, reliable energy is the lifeblood of society – it IS that simple. Most politicians are too uneducated to even opine on energy, let alone set energy policy.

It’s not just about the money, There was an old Soviet term Upravleniye that was about setting collective goals and then steering towards those goals. CAGW turns that desire for an organized, steered society and supposedly makes its use a necessity. Suddenly, human institutions become ‘systems’ and politicians have a field day with all those needed plans.

It’s been around forever – the Bible has whole books devoted to the doomsayers.

There is something in some people that makes them predict the worst unless everybody does what they say. It’s not only Greens though – Hitler, Mao, Marx, all predicted that unless drastic action was taken, terrible things would happen. As with the Greens, terrible things had to happen to prevent the other terrible things though.

the frisson of gothic horror has a market and people do not want less of it. it’s what the pay taxes for.
if the pope suddenly declared there was no hell- nobody would cheer; disappointment would reign.

“Theoretical evidence” is a statement of high confidence in a fact yet to be proven, justified by a complex mathematical presentation where most people are not trained well enough to detect its fundamental sophisticated errors.

The same as every one of these pronouncements or imminent doom…then and now:
Made up jawing, invented on the spot or contrived ahead of time, written down, and optimized for dramatic effect.
None of these were accurate predictions, but they were also not even true statements as far as they represented mainstream views.
Even when they said these things, it was just lying liars doing what big fat lying liars always do: Lie!

the only good they did was in cleaning the rivers up and some good came from pushing better emissions controls on cars and cleaner fuel, i do remember seeing some pretty nasty rivers n air pollution pics from usa back then.and limiting the chemical abuse on farms etc
as for the rest..Im glad im old enough to remember a lot of this and enjoy a laugh

Yet here at the confluence of the Mississippi Missouri and Illinois rivers, we are dealing with the unintended consequences of restoring crystal clear springs and creeks. Simulium meridionale, the Turkey Gnat,
was nearly extinct in the region until a decade or so ago, and has made a ferocious comeback in our cleaned up environment. Now the local Turkey population is taking a big hit because these buggers bite all around the face and nostrils of any animal and cause anaphylaxis in newly hatched fowl of all kinds as well as newborn animals.
Our over burgeoning deer, raccoon, coyote, bobcat, and skunk populations attest to a better managed environment in the US heartland.

Oz, you raise a great point!
If my memory serves, the first Earth Day organized teams to parol the river banks and collect garbage. That continued the next FEW years, expanding to litter pickup on highways.
They mobilized what I would call conservationists (like myself) who valued action, and the first order (cleaner roads and rivers) and second order results (fines for littering, deposits on bottles) were beneficial. These were organized mainly by private Conservation groups (BTW, many of those groups were focused on hunting and also had gun ranges – shock!!).

The next phase was “marches” where participants collected sponsors for the pure (and useless) act of walking. (At the time I wondered why they couldn’t get sponsors for picking up trash rather than just strolling down a highway.)

Today people are organized by an invisible chain of social justice groups and the objective is VIRTUE SIGNALING. (When was the last time you saw that “concerned” group walk river banks or highways collecting trash? More to the point, look at how they leave their protest area when the demonstration concludes.)

As others have pointed out, these “modern” demonstrations no longer limit themselves to the supposed “cause of the day”; instead you will see signs for every socially conscious group (anti-gun, “gender equity”, immigration etc) marching side by side (I may not give a damn about your cause but we will make more of a splash if we all march together at every opportunity. Besides we all have the same paymaster. /sarc, /cynicism)

Please not bottle redemption, they doubled it here in Orydumb because people were putting their recycles in the recycle bin at home and not generating CO2 to bring it back to the store. The state then put in a redemption center where a porno store used to be. Everytime I go to Washington, I’m buying soda in aluminum cans and throwing the empties into the trash now.

Surely there have been some successes. California led the nation in regulating pollution from vehicles. They must have the cleanest air in the world by now.

A quick google shows that California actually has the most polluted air in the nation. link

We look back at previous screw-ups and think we’re somehow immune. Actually, we should look back and despair. We’re no smarter than ‘they’ were. We should learn from ‘their’ mistakes. But no … we have an endless succession of experts telling us how we should conduct our affairs. Those experts have no more chance of being right than dart-throwing monkeys. Their bad advice costs us huge amounts of money and kills lots of people.

Actually research shows the experts do worse than the monkeys. Part of the problem is pinning these experts down to what they actually mean and putting dates and numbers by their predictions. the book “Superforcasting” is quite good on that.

Ronald Reagan was actually RIGHT! It turns out that much of California’s smog comes from Volatile Organic Compounds, i.e. trees and other plants. I remember reading an article in “Science News” on this subject back in the 1970s or 1980s. I’m sure President Reagan either read those same articles, or based his information on the reply he got when he asked, “What makes the Blue Ridge Mountains Blue?” and was ridiculed for his knowledge.

Even more expensive has been the Federal Government’s so-called “War on Poverty” which has never been winnable because the methods and means that were devised and implemented with which to fight made winning a natural impossibility…..And it seems to me that some of the names who have been mentioned in this article were prominent in the planning for the war on poverty…………

The first Earth Day in 1970 is certainly a date for the history books, but so too is the year 2000 date of the Bailey article, roughly the date when the MSM stopped science journalism and switched to deploying science for political purposes.

The essence of science is the ability to predict, and the IPCC and its minions have a perfectly negative predictive track record – NONE of their scary predictions have materialized. That means that the IPCC has NEGATIVE scientific credibility, and nobody should believe anything the IPCC or its minions say.

I have two engineering degrees in earth sciences and have studied this subject since 1985, and I have found NO evidence of dangerous humanmade global warming, and ample evidence that it does NOT exist.

The debate on global warming alarmism concerns one parameter – the climate sensitivity to increasing atmospheric CO2 (“ECS”). Global warming alarmists falsely suggest that ECS is high, yet their estimates of ECS have been declining for the past decade and are still far too high to be credible. There is ample evidence that ECS is low, probably <=1C/(2*CO2) and possibly much less than 1C.

Here is just one of many lines of evidence that ECS is low:

The ~35-year global cooling period that commenced in ~1940, even as fossil fuel consumption sharply increased, adequately falsifies the hypothesis that increasing atmospheric CO2 is a significant driver of global warming. The CAGW hypo is further falsified by the current ~20-year “Pause” in global temperatures, as atmospheric CO2 continued to increase.

That is why the global warming alarmists have more recently been falsifying the temperature data records to minimize the ~35-year cooling period and increase their alleged warming during the Pause.

Conclusion:
Since 1940 there has been ~22 years of positive correlation of temperature with CO2, and ~55 years of negative or ~zero correlation. The global warming hypo is contradicted by a full-Earth-scale test since 1940. CO2 is NOT a significant driver of global warming.

At least the prediction is not for a century or two and has a basis. The marine biology literature shows the fixation on the effects of warmth, cannot immediately recall a cool effect paper or analysis this millennium. Just like about lowering but not raising pH. These will be other major failures of science (physiology), regardless of what happens. It is cold in the ocean even in the tropics.

I was also around at (and long before) the first Earth Day. It was somewhat like the March for Science.

I have no problem believing scientists or their predictions. I have a big problem deciding which scientists and which predictions to believe. Mostly I just decide to ignore them all and in the case of climate science, just look out the window.

Allan, when the “greenhouse” effects that are produced by water vapor are included into the analysis, are we not seeing at least the amount of CO2 produced warming that should be expected? According to what I can find by searching various www sites, The amount of H2O molecules in the atmosphere ranges from maybe 20 to more than 100 times greater then the amount of CO2. Additionally, I find comments to the effect that H2O molecules are more capable of producing atmospheric greenhouse effect.

This whole thing has gone more than a little bit bonkers in my opinion.

While water vapor has a larger GHG effect than CO2, the other effect water has is clouds which both reduces total solar input by reflection and like GHG’s, slows down surface cooling. The warming effect of water (GHG + clouds) is almost completely offset by the cooling effect from albedo. The IPCC obfuscates this with its definition of forcing which is is incremental input power at TOT (or TOA). As this boundary is above the clouds, the effects of cloud (and ice) albedo are effectively cancelled out of the baseline forcing and the corresponding sensitivity.

Yes thomasjk. Bonkers is the word. You only have to look at the Steam Tables to work out that at water phase change the Sensitivity (ECS?) is a big fat ZERO. and there is a lot of water up there in the clouds.

Also if one does one’s homework you will realise that the global temperature is primarily controlled by the combination of gravity, the vapour pressure of water and the partial pressure; all at the prevailing conditions. The reason why all this works is that gaseous water is lighter than dry air and rises up past pesky CO2, dissipating all that 680 WattHrs/kg of Latent Heat into the atmosphere and space. It is called the Rankine Cycle and the IPCC does not appear to know much about it.

I could waffle on; for there are many side issues here; but don’t want to bore everyone.

Alasdair, could you please clarify how the Rankine cycle works outside of a boiler-turbine system for this dummy? I’m having trouble visualizing it even though I know it has to have something to do with it.

The most convincing evidence of a low ECS is the absolute absurdity of a high ECS relative to the laws of physics.

The IPCC’s nominal ECS of 0.8K per W/m^2 is equivalently stated as 4.3 W/m^2 more surface emissions arising from the next W/m^2 of solar forcing. In the steady state, surface emissions must be offset by incident energy. This means that 3.3 W/m^2 of input to the surface above and beyond the 1 W/m^2 of forcing is required to offset the incremental emissions by the surface.

They claim that the extra 3.3 W/m^2 of offsetting input comes from feedback, which mathematically is added to the forcing and must have the same units as the forcing. By contorting the required W/m^2 of feedback as ‘temperature feedback’, the IPCC obfuscates this obvious failure, for if positive feedback is larger than the forcing, the system becomes unconditionally unstable.

Data manipulation predicting impossible trends not withstanding, among the failed predictions the IPCC’s absurd ECS makes are as follows:

1) COE dictates that all Joules are equivalent, thus each W/m^2 of forcing must have the same effect. If each of the 240 W/m^2 of accumulated solar forcing resulted in net surface emissions of 4.3 W/m^2, the surface would be emitting an amount of power corresponding to a temperature close to the boiling point of water.

2) Again considering COE, each of the 240 W/m^2 of accumulated solar forcing equivalently results in 1.6 W/m^2 of surface emissions and predicts that the next will result in no more than 1.6 W/m^2 of emissions owing to the T^4 relationship between emissions and temperature and the 1/T^3 dependence of the sensitivity. It’s absolutely impossible for the next W/m^2 to result in the predicted 4.3 W/m^2 of incremental surface emissions.

3) The linearity assumption led to the presumed nominal sensitivity by dividing the average surface temperature by its emissions 288K / 390W/m^2 = 0.74 K per W/m^2 which is close to the presumed nominal value of 0.8K per W/m^2. The first 10 W/m^2 of forcing results in a temperature of 115K, yet the IPCC presumption of linearity claims the first 10 W/m^2 of forcing would result in a temperature of only 8K.

It only takes one failed prediction to falsify a hypothesis. The fact that the widely falsifiable hypothesis of an absurdly high ECS is still considered valid is a clear and present danger to all scientific disciplines.

…Which led me to consider that since these two factors have shown consistent teleconnections to global weather, and climate is considered 3 decades of weather, how does CO2 play into this at all, especially when it remains a trace gas at under 1%? In what way does CO2 steer ENSO and pressure variations, kelvin waves, trade winds, Hadley cells, etc.?

Wow another topic the Allan is an expert on because he has two engineering degrees.

One of the reason I am a skeptic is the certainty that people know things that can not be know to any measurable certainty.

The second is the obsession with the insignificant. When I was young, air pollution was a real problem. Of course in the context of polio and cars without seat belt, there were some really scaring things and things we should have been scared of.

Retired Kit P………………..Likewise……………I am also retired ……………….but your “nit-picking” of Allan’s
article seems somewhat inappropriate. (I seemingly have the SAME LEVEL of expertise as yourself in that
I am also retired ! ) I guess that it depends to some extent what it is or was that you retired from .
Professional wrestling , car salesman , ???? Probably teaching ! They SEEM to know everything that there
is to know……….except how to use the word KNOWN correctly.
At least Allan is offering “an INFORMED OPINION” together with evidence that backs his opinion.
I find it hard to believe that you rated “air pollution , polio and a lack of seat-belts in cars as “really scaring
things” while at the SAME TIME we lived CONSTANTLY with the threat of NUCLEAR ANNIHILATION.
Cherry picking ? Willful blindness ? Perhaps , a mere oversight !?
Good thing that that poor delusional excuse for a president , the washed-up B Movie actor , Ronald
Reagan ( who at 69 should have been retired ) got elected and together with Mikhail Gorbachev
and eventually George Bush Snr managed TO END THE COLD WAR !
Apart from getting involved in a lot more “hot” wars since , the presidents since then haven’t made much of
a contribution it SEEMS to me ! Perhaps it is a good thing that a fading TV star and property tycoon and
even older unlikely candidate has been elected recently ! These poor old coots just NEVER KNOW
when to retire do they ! Obviously they bring THEIR uninformed opinions to office with them !
I guess time ( not the magazine ! ) will tell !

meteorologist in research wrote:
“If the temperature of the planet goes down for a statistically meaningful amount of time then AGW will be falsified.”

Agreed m-i-r, but this has already happened, when Earth cooled from ~1940 to ~1977, even as atmospheric CO2 accelerated, so the CAGW hypo is already falsified.

The CAGW hypo is also falsified as follows:
The upper-bound estimate of Transient Climate Sensitivity of ~1C/(2xCO2) by Christy and McNider (2017) is highly credible for the satellite era from ~1979 to mid-2017. This upper bound was calculated assuming (conservatively, for the sake of simplicity and clarity) that ALL the observed warming in the satellite era was due to increasing atmospheric CO2. This maximum climate sensitivity is so low that there is NO credible global warming crisis.https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2017/11/2017_christy_mcnider-1.pdf

I have searched and found NO credible evidence that catastrophic human-made global warming exists in reality. None!

Incidentally, using the same assumptions as Christy and McNider, the TCS for the period ~1940 to ~1977 is about MINUS 1C/(2xCO2).

Furthermore, I proved in 2008 that the velocity dCO2/dt changes contemporaneously with global temperature, and its integral atmospheric CO2 changes ~9 months later. This clear signal can only exist if TCS is very small. See also Humlum et al (2013) for a similar observation.

Practically speaking, if TCS exists at all in significance, it must be very low, probably a positive number less than 0.5C/(2xCO2), or even lower.

In summary, the catastrophic human-made global warming crisis has already been disproved.

“It is instructive to consider the variation of the annual change rate of atmospheric CO2 together with the annual change rates for the global air temperature and global sea surface temperature (Figure 16). All three change rates clearly vary in concert, but with sea surface temperature rates leading the global temperature rates by a few months and atmospheric CO2 rates lagging 11–12 months behind the sea surface temperature rates.”

Global warming alarmists could not be more wrong. These are the true facts, which are opposite to false alarmist claims:
1. CO2 is plant food, and greater atmospheric CO2 is good for natural plants and also for agriculture.
2. Earth’s atmosphere is clearly CO2-deficient and the current increase in CO2 (whatever the causes) is net beneficial to humanity and the environment.
3. Increased atmospheric CO2 does not cause significant global warming – regrettable because the world is too cold and about to get colder, imo.

Kit P,
It is not degrees from a university that makes a person correct or incorrect.
It is whether they are correct or not, and nothing else, that makes them correct or incorrect.
If degrees were all that mattered and such degrees as made someone an “expert” in a given field also magically imbued them with the quality of always being correct, we would not be here, and the global warming alarmism fiasco would not and could not exist.
I knew global warming alarmist was nonsense the first time I heard it, and my reasons for the belief have been increasing and being strengthened and reinforced ever since.
Even if not a single shred of other evidence was available, why would any rational person believe people who have invented fake data, and then used charts of that fake data to convince people that they are correct?

“CLIMATE SCIENCE DOES NOT SUPPORT THE THEORY OF CATASTROPHIC HUMAN-MADE GLOBAL WARMING – THE ALLEGED WARMING CRISIS DOES NOT EXIST.”

Result: By the time the cooling after the recent El Nino is completed, the ~20-year “Pause” will have been re-established and there will continue to be no real global warming crisis, despite large increases in atmospheric CO2 – the sensitivity of climate to increasing CO2 will continue to be small and any minor warming will not be dangerous.

We also confidently wrote in 2002:

“THE ULTIMATE AGENDA OF PRO-KYOTO ADVOCATES IS TO ELIMINATE FOSSIL FUELS, BUT THIS WOULD RESULT IN A CATASTROPHIC SHORTFALL IN GLOBAL ENERGY SUPPLY – THE WASTEFUL, INEFFICIENT ENERGY SOLUTIONS PROPOSED BY KYOTO ADVOCATES SIMPLY CANNOT REPLACE FOSSIL FUELS.”

Result: Green energy schemes have proven to be excessively expensive, unreliable, intermittent and in summary, a costly debacle. Fully 85% of global primary energy is still provided by fossil fuels (oil, natural gas and coal), with nuclear and hydro providing almost all of the remainder.

Tens of trillions of dollars of scarce global resources have been squandered on the global warming scam, enough money to corrupt countless politicians, government officials and academics. The result has been an avoidable huge increase in electrical costs, the destabilizing of electrical grids due to intermittent wind and solar power, and the suffering and premature deaths of millions due to dysfunctional energy policies.

In addition to the corruption of science, the many trillions of dollars misallocated in the global warming scam could have been used to alleviate enormous human suffering and save millions of lives.

It is long past time that the scientific community stopped this charade, and soundly condemned and ended the ~35-year old global warming scam.

“I have two engineering degrees in earth sciences
and have studied this subject since 1985,
and I have found NO evidence of dangerous
human made global warming, and
ample evidence that it does NOT exist.”

My comment:
You may be qualified to talk about REAL science,
MacRae, and I certainly think you are … but …
“modern climate science” is completely different:

(1) Faith in government bureaucrats

(2) Wild guess predictions of the future climate

(3) Ignore wrong past predictions.

(4) Ignore the wonderful current climate.

(5) Claim that supercomputer models are
all the proof you need.

(6) Never show doubt about anything

(7) Refuse to debate anything

MacRae, be honest with us now:
Did you learn any of the seven points
above when you were going to school?

No Richard Greene – I missed that particular lecture. I heard that the self-proclaimed “climate scientist” was a raving lunatic, who actually howled at the full moon – so I decided to skip that lecture. I cannot recall his name for sure, but I think it was Piltdown – yes that’s it – Dr. Piltdown Mann. :-)

And I was the guy who sits front and center for every lecture, but got kicked out of this one (a first) for heckling the lecturer: Asking inconvenient questions, and being generally and impertinently skeptical.

Only 3% of Climate scientists left. We have a consensus from the grave. Most everybody else is dead too. The adjusted data is evidence of that but nobody left to analyze it. Most of my friends are dead but until now I thought it was because I am old and they were too. The environment spared me. I will drink to that.

Last month we read in the newspapers that some luminary had figured out that drinking wine was very bad for you and that umpty glasses a week would cost you a year of your life. Needless to say this ludicrous news was countradicted about a fortnight later, but I already new that. I had made a quick calculation based on the numbers provided and found that I had died almost 15 years ago.

We have an insatiable desire for forecasts about the future, and always have had, so we use whatever we have, whether it’s the entrails of goats or the biggest supercomputer. And in most ways, we haven’t got any better at it. For some deep psychological reason, we find uncertainty difficult, and making decision with uncertainty very hard. The story about D-Day (I think) illustrates that: a statistician looked at the accuracy of long range weather forecasts being used for planning, and showed that they were worse than random, but Eisenhower (I think) said “but I have to have something!”

So we use what we probably know deep down are guesses or worse, and tell ourselves they are better than nothing. Of course that allows us to be manipulated by the unscrupulous and those with an agenda, which is why scepticism is such a vital tool, and why its near-death is such a problem for our societies and economies.

Have not gotten any better at it?
I can tell you why that is right off the bat: You are using goat entrails.
That will not tell you a darn thing, except what goat entrails look and smell like.
For accurate and up to date forecasts, you need to use a freshly slaughtered chicken.
Although rolling the dried bones will suffice in a pinch.

No mention of this conference ?
1975 `Endangered Atmosphere’ Conference: Where the Global Warming Hoax Was Born
Margaret Mead Ph.D gave the marching orders ( with consensus) :
“What we need from scientists are estimates, presented with sufficient conservatism and plausibility but at the same time as free as possible from internal disagreements that can be exploited by political interests, that will allow us to start building a system of artificial but effective warnings, warnings which will parallel the instincts of animals who flee before the hurricane, pile up a larger store of nuts before a severe winter, or of caterpillars who respond to impending climatic changes by growing thicker coats”

“artifical warnings,which will parallel the instincts of animals” ? I wonder what animals she meant, Could it have been you all , us?
CO2 is only one of the artificial warning series including ozone, plastic… It does not matter that they are shown to be false taken one-at-a-time, connecto, by induction, by creeping and crawling as animals do.
Who are those few that would cull our billions as animals?
Shades of Zeus’ anger at hearing Prometheus gave us mortals fire. Or much the same, Enlil’s, of the Akkadian Atra-Hasis, decision to cull mankind. Or Prince Philip’s wish to be reincarnated as a deadly virus to cull. Not to mention Sir Julian Huxley, or Prince Bernhard, the 3 WWF founders.
So no more creeping and crawling to the next scare, to the culling!

Can we start with the royal family first please; Philip at the front of the queue followed by his dorky son Charles, soon to be head of the Commwealth I believe. I would give the Queen a pass as she has remained dignified and kept her mouth shut. But please, let her be the last.

The queen, and most Britons, recognize that Charles is a victim of the congenital “royal disease”. That is, he’s very dim-witted and is fixated on goofy theories, like stopping CO2 emissions and promotion of disastrous alternative energy scams. Him being on the throne would be a disaster for Britain and a huge family embarrassment. She’s determined to outlive him so that William succeeds her.

Climate scientist Stephen Schneider (IPCC) co-authored with Paul Ehrlich mentioned often in the Lead, on “carrying capacity” was at that conference along with John Holdren later Obama’s “advisor”. Small world.

In February 1983, Derek Freeman, an Australian anthropologist, documented that Margaret’s account of life on Samoa was a complete hoax. There is a lot more there from Dr.Spock,LSD to marijana, cultural perversion …. Anthropology is a complete fraud.

bonbon
April 21, 2018 at 4:52 am: Mead, who my polynesian neighbours made a twit of. By playing on her obvious preconceptions about mores…..Something we deplorables love to do to all snowflakes. None so stupid as those who think they know best, and now they aspire to rule us all. Ha!

The self-styled “Progressives”, the US Democrats, the Canadian Liberals and NDP, the British Labour Party and the Greens worldwide are pawns of the extreme left and have been so since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Here is some history:

“Surprisingly enough the second event that caused the environmental movement to veer to the left was the fall of the Berlin Wall. Suddenly the international peace movement had a lot less to do. Pro-Soviet groups in the West were discredited. Many of their members moved into the environmental movement bringing with them their eco-Marxism and pro-Sandinista sentiments.”

Many of these imbeciles don’t even know it, but they are following a covert Marxist agenda intended to damage our economies, cloaked in phony green rhetoric.

Marxism made simple:

The Groucho Marxists are the leaders – they want power for its own sake at any cost, and typically are sociopaths or psychopaths. The great killers of recent history, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Pol Pot. etc. were of this odious ilk – first they get power, then they implement their crazy schemes that do not work and too often kill everyone who opposes them.

The Harpo Marxists are the followers – the “sheeple” – these are people of less-than-average intelligence who are easily duped and follow the Groucho’s until it is too late, their rights are lost and their society destroyed. They are attracted to simplistic concepts that “feel good” but rarely “do good”.

George Carlin said: “You know how stupid the average person is, right? Well, half of them are stupider than that!”

One can easily identify many members of these two groups in the global warming debate – and none of them are ”climate skeptics”.

“The goal now is a socialist, redistributionist society,
which is nature’s proper steward and society’s only hope.”
– David Brower,
founder of Friends of the Earth

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“If we don’t overthrow capitalism, we don’t have a chance of
saving the world ecologically. I think it is possible to have
an ecologically sound society under socialism.
I don’t think it is possible under capitalism”
– Judi Bari,
principal organiser of Earth First!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the
industrialized civilizations collapse?
Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?”
– Maurice Strong,
founder of the UN Environment Programme

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the
United States. De-development means bringing our
economic system into line with the realities of
ecology and the world resource situation.”
– Paul Ehrlich,
Professor of Population Studies

Odd the omission of the entire Frankfurt School of Comintern Lukacs, and Adorno, Marcuse, Arendt?
Lukacs’ of “Who will save us from Western civilization?” Fatal for Marxism is Leibniz’s demonstration that matter does not think.

Please note that, in the UK, Global Warming was promoted by the British Conservative Party, not Labour.
Labour supported industry. It is the party of the political Left and so looked after the workers. They did not attack the coal industry in the ’80s.

Margaret Thatcher pushed Global Warming.
She was the driving force behind the formation of the IPCC. And she was on the political right.

I think most of the damage to the UK electrical grid was done my Tony Blair, who was the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1997 to 2007 and Leader of the Labour Party from 1994 to 2007.

Unfortunately, the Conservatives have been almost as destructive since then with their own disastrous green energy follies.

The problem with grid-connected green energy is intermittency, and neither Labour or the Conservatives seem to be able to grasp the concept that the wind doesn’t blow all the time; neither does the Sun shine 24/7.

When idiot politicians fool with energy systems, real people suffer and die.

The irony is, of course, that there is only one system that has proven to be able to deliver a better environment. Free market capitalism. It generates the wealth without which any clean environment would remain a pipe dream. And it encourages creative solutions to whatever problems arise. The great socialist experiment of the old Soviet Union and its empire was one of the dirtiest places on the planet. Ask any Pole or East German. The city of Leipzig was, when the wall came down, the dirtiest most polluted place in Europe. It took decades and billions to clean it up.

Only ignorant idiots and charlatans claim that socialism will be environmentally beneficial.

In July of 1989 I entered East Berlin and East Germany through Checkpoint Charlie. The dreaded communist Honecker regime was still in power then; it was just four months before the Wall fell.

I wrote the following long ago and I didn’t keep track of dates then – probably about 2010.

THIS FEARFUL, REPRESSIVE SCENARIO IS WHAT THE LEFTISTS WANT FOR AMERICA.
____________________________

I had the privilege and misfortune of travelling into East Germany in July of 1989, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall.

We were on a business mission to West Germany, and somehow our bosses had committed us at the last minute to a brief detour into the East.

One of our group refused to go, saying it was a despicable totalitarian sh!thole, so we agreed to meet him in Cologne.

We flew to Tegel airport in West Berlin, and were escorted by a Stasi driver though West Berlin. It was Friday night, and West Berlin looked exciting, electric..

We travelled though the Berlin Wall at Checkpoint Charlie, and the world changed. I had been sitting in the front seat beside the driver snapping photos, but when I tried to take one of the East German checkpoint, I felt resistance as I tried to lift my camera. The Stasi driver’s hand was on my camera holding it down, even as he looked the other way, talking through his window to the East German border guard.

We took a sharp left and then a sharp right onto the main street, called Unter den Linden. The majestic Brandenburg Gate was visible just behind us. As we passed the Reichstag, I lifted my camera to snap a picture. The driver stopped quickly to assist my photo, and it was suddenly obvious that there were no other vehicles on the street, and no pedestrians either.

We stayed at the Metropol Hotel that first night, and went for a walk after dinner. I had asked my dinner hosts if I could go for a jog in the morning, and was cautioned that “We do not jog in East Berlin” I then asked if I could go for a long walk, and was assured, with a telling look, “You can walk anywhere in East Berlin – you will be perfectly safe, not like your London and New York”.

We soon found out what he meant – every block had eight small kiosks staffed with police, two on each side of the street. At any time we were within easy view of perhaps ten such police posts. Again, we were the only people on the street. The police talked quietly with each other on their telephones, and seemed to know that we were no cause for alarm. Their primary job to prevent any attempts by East Germans to defect to the Western embassies located on Unter den Linden.

In our brief stay, we visited a mine to view some equipment, had interminable meetings in a very hot room, learned that the local cola beverage was called Prik Cola, and found that our business colleagues in East Germany were pretty human, much like ourselves.

I also had sufficient liberty to get away from our group, and was able to observe that East German infrastructure was crumbling, the roads, buildings, sewage systems, cars, trains, heavy equipment, electrics, electronics, etc. etc. etc. were fifty years out-of-date and falling apart. Environmental degradation by industry was severe and disgusting.

More significantly, the East German people were a fearful lot – frightened to death of me, lest someone think they were communicating with me and report them to the dreaded Stasi. Those condemned to the Stasi, and there were many, would lose their jobs and could wind up in prison – their lives would be ruined.

My friend was right – East Germany was a vicious totalitarian state, and worse. We all decided that we had seen enough, and agreed to leave a day early.

We took a taxi to the Wall, and negotiated our way through Checkpoint Charlie again, this time without the assistance of our Stasi driver, and spent the extra day walking around West Berlin.

We saw a memorial to those who had been killed trying to escape through the Wall. The last death took place a few months earlier in February 1989, when Chris Gueffroy died trying to escape into West Berlin. Gueffroy was hit in the chest by ten shots and died in the border strip. He was 20 years old.

Several months later the Wall fell, and I stayed up all night watching the celebrations on CNN.

Now that was a good day!

Epilogue:

I recall our Canadian NDP leaders extolling the virtues of East Germany to the Canadian public, and their stories being dutifully reported by the Canadian press – how East Germany was the “Economic Engine of the Soviet Union”, “The Workers’ Paradise”, and all that other BS. I shall never forgive the Canadian left for these self-serving lies, and I will never believe a word they say.

A few years later, I was back in Berlin on another business trip. Although I no longer jogged, I walked to the Brandenburg Gate. Then, I broke into a slow jog, and ambled my way through the Brandenburg Gate and down Unter den Linden.

When economic growth under socialism
looks bad, you have to sell socialism
in a new way that makes slow economic
growth good news — you claim slow growth
will save the world from CO2 “pollution”
and catastrophic global warming !

Stanford’s Paul Ehrlich on the problems of the modern jawPaul Ehrlich wants you to shut your mouth – for your health. According to Ehrlich’s new book, mouth breathing, among other modern habits, has led to an epidemic of small jaws and many troubling health consequences.

Stanford researcher declares that the sixth mass extinction is herePaul Ehrlich and others use highly conservative estimates to prove that species are disappearing faster than at any time since the dinosaurs’ demise.

Some are, in the image of ancient Enlil, Zeus. Why bother explaining to the herd on the way to the cull? The explanation won’t save you. They move onto the next artificial scare. It is a fatal mistake to believe it has anything to do with science. The NOAA Climategate II whistleblower realized when the science is challenged the Malthusian population overriding ideology pops up.

Re: By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine.

I could invite these twinkie-munchers to take a hard look at my pantry, cupboards and stocked shelves, but that would waste my time and energy. It’s much more beneficial to our souls to rebut every single thing they’ve said, because I knew it wasn’t true in 1970 and it’s even MORE UNTRUE NOW.

While I’m at it, the 1785 “Cookery” cookbook by Hannah Glasse is a very worthwhile expenditure for your household. You never know when the power will go out, right?

Is the message here, “People who worry about keeping a clean house(planet) are ridiculous — just look at the silly predictions they make (subtext: the rest of us are sane)”? Or is it, “People, because we’re people, sometimes tell ourselves wild and scary stories — like these environmental ones, and like [insert Planet X predictions, Mayan calendars, various religious prophecies here]”?

Earth Day ?
There was a time when the countless tribes of
men, though wide-dispersed, oppressed the surface
of the deep-bosomed Earth, and Zeus saw it
and had pity, and in his wise heart resolved to
relieve the all-nurturing Earth of men, by causing
the great struggle of the Ilian war, that the
load of death might empty the world. And so the
heroes were slain in Troy, and the plan of Zeus
came to pass.
Hesiod, The Homeric Hymns, and Homerica, Hugh G. Evelyn-White, ed., July 2008.
Today some few relish the thought of a thermonuclear confrontation in this ancient oligarchical genocidal mode.

Our culture is becoming unhinged. It seems like a lot of people are becoming preoccupied with these dystopian predictions. Personally, I think people are increasingly socially isolated and find some odd solace that all of us, not just them, are doomed.

I agree, Grant. I like to blame the “TV” for short-circuiting the reciprocity of human relationship…sadly, people bond with the fictitious characters they watch in movies and sitcoms, characters that don’t relate back to them. Human identity is negotiated between people by what we know about each other and in today’s “pc” social environment they’re scared of losing what little humanity they have left to claim. Watch TV and “who” knows you? You don’t even know you.

Sorry, but that is bunch of nonsense. Dystopian predictions are nothing new. People have been predicting the world’s end for thousands of years. Pessimism is deeply ingrained in humans.

@mairon62

I don’t even understand what you are trying say here. Do you have any actual evidence or is this just feelings and, ironically, pessimistic assumptions? After all, if if the world isn’t doomed then our technology and way of life is. It’s amusing how you then read history and see people saying exact same thing as today.

This is a fantastic twitter account. I recommend reading it: https://twitter.com/PessimistsArc You learn that people used to hate reading and writing, claimed that books made us stupid, etc.

I think that more people are more vulnerable than ever to being swayed by doomsday predictions. Thank you internet, Twitter, Snapchat, Facebook, iPhones, etc.

We’re getting fatter and more informed with garbage. … prime pickin’s for marketeers who want to make lots of $$ from our fears. The technological platform for pushing the advertising to capture those dollars is very well established. We’re fattened into sedentary lifestyles to sit before these devices and digest everything that these advertisers say to get our $$.

Like I said in earlier post, pessimism is deeply ingrained in human psychology. Writing, reading, books, technology of any kind, pretty much everything have been claimed to be bad. Do you honestly think that we would be better off without those services and devices? Without them people would just get their info from books and that didn’t stop doomsday predictions. Heck, first Earth day was in 1970 long before Facebook, or any of those things. Maybe we should burn the books and ban education. Nobody would be able to read, but it would be absurd to claim that this would be a good thing. Though maybe someone would agree with this, afterall people have claimed in the past that books and writing were making everyone “stupid”.

“Scientists should consider stretching the truth to get some broad-base support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention about any doubts we might have.”

Proof we should ignore what scientists say, and pay attention only to what science says.

Thanks Richard, I’ll trade my writing ability for some math comprehension anyday. I am sometimes compelled to sum up my observations in poetry, and it tends to become something akin to scrabble or crossword puzzles for enjoyment. Everyone is welcome to pass them along as being from an anonymous source because this subject is about all of us, not just me.

#17 is actually coming true but not in the way Ehrlich thought. One of the major reasons rain forests are being cut down is to grow crops to make biofuels. So it turns out that their dumb ideas are what made their dire prophecy have some substance.

I don’t have the details to hand, but I seem to remember that Kenneth Watt is not an ecologist, and certainly not a climate scientist. He was a zoologist or entemologist. I also think he was denying global warming long after the 70s, suggesting the temperature records were wrong.

“….Well, it’s now the 48th anniversary of Earth Day, and a good time to ask the question again that Bailey asked 18 years ago: How accurate were the predictions made around the time of the first Earth Day in 1970? The answer: “The prophets of doom were not simply wrong, but spectacularly wrong,” according to Bailey….”.

IMHO, what many loyalists and followers of the environmental movement seem to be doing is mistaking arrogance for intelligence. One can be arrogant as heck and still engage in poor decision-making from the lack of adequate intelligence. With arrogance having been chosen as an an acceptable substitute for intelligence, the environmental movement has chosen means to its ends (wind and solar energy and the climate alarmist narrative) that have shaky scientific, engineering and economic bases and are easily questionable. When you throw politics and political ideologies into the mix, things only get worse.

When people accept arrogance as a substitute for intelligence in their leaders without knowing or realizing it, it becomes easy for the arrogant leadership to play on the fears and scientific or other illiteracy of the masses. Only the ones that are enlightened enough and have adequate literacy can see through the rhetoric and realize the errant ways that have been chosen by the arrogant leadership.

Awarding themselves a license of moral superiority and self-righteousness makes the arrogant leadership impossible to reason with. At his point, making false and misleading predictions matters not one iota. They are incapable of being wrong, especially when they are.

I don’t even want to talk about how much this has happened in human (excuse me, huperson) history.

Doom, my favorite four letter word. Consider it’s rather specialized use as rhetorical device. When things get really bad in one’s head you don’t merely cuss in man to man fashion you pronounce to one and all, “YOU’RE ALL DOOMED.” And it’s nothing at all new. It’s been going on since Moses threw down the tablets and has been taken up by preachers everywhere since. The IPCC even unashamedly refers to one of its graphs as the “burning embers” diagram. GOOD GRIEF let’s keep the devil out of this debate.

All these conflicting warm and cold effects on the climate might make it look like science contradicts itself. And these apparent contradictions are often used by climate change deniers.

Supreme idiotic comment, since no one sane would deny climate did, does and will change. But Bobby is a journalist/proselyte and not a good writer to boot. His straw man argument shows unadulterated ignorance of atmospheric circulation. A really bad start… Ciao Bobby.

Oh man, this is brilliant! My entire life (I am 61) has been accompanied by various doomsday threats. I don’t care anymore, I lean back and listen to my old Steely Dan records and grow my own vegetables. :-)

1) Why did sea level rise faster in early 2Oth century than now and even now is not accelerating?
2) Why do only rural land temperature data sets show no warming?
3) Why did climate scientists in the climategate emails worry about no warming trends? They are supposed to be unbiased either way.
4) Why do some local temperature land based datasets show no warming Ex: Augusta Georgia for last 83 years? There must be 1000’s of other places like this.
5) Why do 10 of the 13 weather stations in Antarctica show no warming in last 60 years? The 3 that do are near undersea volcanic ridges.
6) Why does the lower troposphere satellite data of UAH show very little warming and in fact showed cooling from 1978 to 1997?
7) Why is there only a 21% increase in net atmosphere CO2 ppm since 1980 but yet mankind increased fossil fuel emissions CO2 by 75%?
8) Why did National Academy of Sciences in 1975 show warming in the 30’s and 40’s and NASA in 1998 and 2008 not show nearly as much warming for those time periods?
9) Why has no one been able to disprove Lord Monckton’s finding of the basic flaw in the climate sensitivity equations after doubling CO2?
10) Why has there never been even 1 accurate prediction by a climate model. Even if one climate model is less wrong than another one it is still wrong.
11) Why do most climate scientists not understand the difference between accuracy and precision?
12) Why have many scientists resigned from the IPCC in protest?
13) Why do many politicians, media and climate scientists continue to lie about CO2 causing extreme weather events? Every data set in the world shows there are no more extreme weather events than there ever were
14) Why do clmate scientists call skeptics deniers as if we were denying the holocaust?
!5) Why did Michael Mann refuse to hand over his data when he sued Tim Ball for defamation and why did Mann subsequently drop the suit?
16) Why have every climate scientist that has ever debated the science of global warming lost every debate that has ever occurred?
17) Why does every climate scientist now absolutely refuse to debate anymore?
18) Why do careers get ruined when scientists dare to doubt global warming in public?
19) Why do most of the scientists that retire come out against global warming?
20) Why is it next to impossible to obtain a PhD in Atmospheric science if one has doubts about global warming?
21) Why is it very very difficult to get funding for any study that casts doubt on global warming?
22) Why has the earth greened by 18% in the last 30 years?
23) Why do clmate scientists want to starve plants by limiting their access to CO2? Optimum levels are 1200 ppm not 410ppm.
24) Why do most climate scientists refuse to release their data to skeptics?
25) Why should the rest of the world ruin their economies when China and India have refused to stop increasing their emmissions of CO2 till 2030?
26) Why have the alarmist scientists like Michael Mann called Dr. Judith Curry an anti scientist?
27) Why does the IPCC not admit that under their own calculations a business as usual policy would have the CO2 levels hit 590ppm in 2100 which is exactly twice the CO2 level since 1850.?
28) Why do the climate modellers not admit that the error factor for clouds makes their models worthless?
29) Why did NASA show no increase in atmospheric water vapour for 20 years before James Hansen shut the project down in 2009?
30) Why did Ben Santer change the text to result in an opposite conclusion in the IPCC report of 1996 and did this without consulting the scientists that had made the original report?
31) Why does the IPCC say with 90% confidence that anthropogenic CO2 is causing warming when they have no evidence to back this up except computer model predictions which are coded to produce results that CO2 causes warming?
32) How can we believe climate forecasts when 4 day weather forecasts are very iffy?.
33) Why do all climate models show the tropical troposhere hotspot when no hotspot has actually been found in nature?
34) Why does the extreme range of the climate models increase as the number of runs increases on the same simulation?
35) Why is the normal greenhouse effect not observed for SST?
36) Why is SST net warming increase close to 0?
37) Why is the ocean ph level steady over the lifetime of the measurements?
38) what results has anyone ever seen from global warming if it exists? I have been waiting for it for 40 years and havent seen it yet?
39) If there were times in the past when CO2 was 20 times higher than today why wasnt there runaway global warming then?
40) Why was there a pause in the satellite data warming in the early 2000’s?
41) Why did CO2 rise after WW2 and temperatures fall?
42) For the last 10000 years over half of those years showed more warmung than today Why?
43) Why does the IPCC refuse to put an exact % on the AGW and the natural GW?
44) Why do the alarmists still say that there is a 97% consensus when everyone knows that figure was madeup?
45) The latest polls show that 33% do not believe in global warming and that figure is increasing poll by poll ? why?
46) If CO2 is supposed to cause more evaporation how can there ever be more droughts with CO2 forcing?
47) Why are there 4 times the number of polar bears as in 1960?
48) Why did the oceans never become acidic even with CO2 levels 15-20 times higher than today?
49) Why does Antarctica sea ice extent show no decrease in 25 years?
50) Why do alarmists resent skeptics getting funding from fossil fuel companies ( when alarmists get billions from the government and leftest think tanks) and skeptics get next to nothing from governments for climate research?
51) If in the spring the Bloomberg carbon clock is only growing .00000001 every 6 seconds and therefore at that rate in 1 year it is only increasing .05ppm and then in the fall and winter it increases at a rate of only 2ppm per year; then why do we have to worry about carbon increases?
52) Why arent the alarmists concerned with actual human lives. In England every winter there are old people who succumb to the cold because they cant afford the increased heating bills caused by green subsidies.
53) Why did Phil Jones a climategate conspirator, admit in 2010 that there was no statistically meaningful difference in 4 different period temperature data that used both atmospheric temperature and sea surface temperature?
54) Why does the IPCC still say that the residence time of CO2 in the atmosphere is a 100 years when over 80 studies have concluded it is more like 5 years?

They will say that by increasing awareness of the problem regulations were implemented that saved the planet. Except the reality is that pollutant emissions were already declining before the EPA was established.

The regulations probably sped up the process. I’m not against regulation. But at some point the costs to make air cleaner outweigh whatever benefit we get. According to the EPA, emissions of six major pollutants it tracks have declined 73% since 1970. The “average” American is likely breathing the cleanest air he’s ever breathed in his life.

Scott I agree with you in general but there is a flaw in your logic. Emissions are not the same as pollution.

When I was growing up in Fort Wayne, Indiana we had a coal furnace that had been converted to oil and we had a 30’s era coal power plant downtown. Heating with natural gas, electrification, and modern more efficient coal power located in rural areas lowered pollution in cities. About 20% of power coming from nukes helped too.

California is a different story. I spent summers there since 1960, was stationed there in the early 70s while in the navy, and lived there for six years. Most of California has clean air. Only one place did not.

Hollywood! It is more about perception than it about measuring air quality and comparing it to heath standards.

Too many people, driving too many cars, too miles in a place that traps emissions results in CARB dictating standards for all Americans.

I do recall being at school in about 1973 and my biology teacher trying to fire me up with green rhetoric. He strongly believed that soon we would run out of stuff, according to Ehrlich’s book, which he gave me to read. He advised us to buy and store lead, as it would be one of the commodities that would be increasing in value due to shortages. I rejected his advice, and did engineering.

CO2 ‘pollution’ control is about people control, via government control of emissions from energy production and driving energy prices ever higher. Reducing the CO2 plant food needed by global flora for robust growth is just an ‘unfortunate’ but acceptable consequence, it seems, to the AGW advocates.

Whether the predictions came true matters no more than the efficiency and environmental improvements we’ve made over the last 50 years, for the same reason that decreasing poverty or improving standards of living don’t answer the question of poverty and falling violent crime rates in the US are apparently an emergency that must be addressed immediately.

All eighteen predictions were pretty moronic, but one seems to stand out:

“10. Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.”

Nitrogen buildup? Light filtered out of the atmosphere?

What’s up with that?

I have always been under the impression that the atmosphere is comprised of about 78% nitrogen, and has been for quite a long time. If nitrogen could “filter light out of the atmosphere”, the planet would have been shrouded in darkness for the past several hundred million years or so. I guess pushing the idea of nitrogen “pollution” didn’t work out, so they moved on to “carbon” pollution.

Terry, The only thing that could be reasonably assumed by this prediction is Nitrous Oxide (NOx) emissions from combustion of fossil fuels. NOx is responsible for smog like conditions and is now a regulated pollutant. However, it would be a huge overstatement to claim that so much would be created to shroud the earth in darkness.

Great progress has been made over the past 50 years in achieving much cleaner air and water supplies. That’s a great achievement and should not be rolled back by the likes of the Koch clan and other avaricious reactionaries , via their agents in DC, such as Pruitt.

Deindustrialization and decarbonization, however, are different matters need to be resisted at all cost.

Those of us in the third trimester of life remember well the smokey air of our childhoods, even small-towners.
The current state of the US environment is beginning a decline again after being cleaned up exceedingly since the birth of ecological thinking. The problem now is litter. The same millenials who rally for renewables think nothing of ejecting their fast-food waste along the picturesque rural lanes as they practice eating while cross-country racing during their lunch breaks.

For ‘Earth Day” I cut down about 25 trees. Just cut ’em down and left them to rot. Wanted to do that patch for several years. Whacked about 50-100 last year. Just cut ’em down and left them to rot.

Now my shooting lanes are open for deer hunting and the small game have brush pile condos. The new growth keeps the deer close by, especially when cold and snowy. I think everything likes the strategically located briar patches.

Anyone want to celebrate ‘Earth Day’ next year? With some help I’ll take out another 100 or so. You can even have the wood! The only sound better than those trees falling is next seasons rifle shot and the smell of venison.

“Ecologist Kenneth Watt told Time that, “At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it’s only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable.””
Except that nitrogen isn’t building up and also does not filter out light. Other than that, totally right.

I find it hard to believe that you rated “air pollution , polio and a lack of seat-belts in cars as “really scaring
things” while at the SAME TIME we lived CONSTANTLY with the threat of NUCLEAR ANNIHILATION.”

My training and experience is as a mechanical and environmental engineer in nuclear power. I was also a nuclear trained navy line officer.

So I do not have an issue with Allan providing his thoughts until he uses engineering background to validate what he says. I have never caught Allan being well informed.

The topic of this discussion is irrational fear mongering leading up to the 70s. I can remember being afraid of mean dogs and polio. Having been bitten by a mean dog and having school mates who were polio survivors, I do not think these fears were irrational.

It was a big deal when the polio was distributed in school. It is part of my belief system that we solve problems and make the world a better place.

I stopped being afraid of dogs when I read that dogs were instinctively afraid of men holding clubs. Never had a problem with a dog since. A little bit of knowledge goes a long way in handling fear.

Keep in mind that I am relating experiences before I was trained as an engineer. I never worried about nuclear annihilation. It seems rather silly to rate the effectiveness of fear mongers by how many they influence.

“Keep in mind that I am relating experiences before I was trained as an engineer. I never worried about nuclear annihilation. It seems rather silly to rate the effectiveness of fear mongers by how many they influence.”
It seems rather silly to rate the effectiveness……..by how many they influence” ??????????????????????
SORRY ! BUT HOW ELSE DO YOU RATE EFFECTIVENESS IF NOT BY THE NUMBERS THEY INFLUENCE ???????????????????????????????
Some engineer YOU must have been ! and in the NUCLEAR POWER INDUSTRY !?
Thank god that you ( like me ) are RETIRED. That makes you an EX-PROBLEM NOW ! PHEW !
That IS a relief for us all……….thanks “Retired Kit P” .

Note that all these people who control this narrative are biologists/ecologists. I’ve met a few real scientists among their lot, the ones who come to WUWT come to mind. Biology and its spawn has been a broken, activist science for over half a century. They broke the first ground of misuse and misunderstanding of the scientific method and were imbued with that dangerous “little bit of knowledge” to skew their work into anti-human purpose. Lysenko is the father of modern biological sciences. Climate science followed suit and gleeful biologists flocked to it in droves.

Dr Harrison Brown, who opined we would run out of the main base metals before 2000, read, perhaps in the USGS reports on minerals and metals, what the world reserves of these commodities were, totally not understanding what mineral reserves are to a mining company. I graduated in 1961 in engineering and took a masters in economic geology, and Ive basically had to argue this linear thinking beast even before graduation. It was the inspiration for the Club of Rome Limits to Growth. I made a bet with one of my “humanities” friends that the world reserves of copper would be the same in 2000 as they were in the 1960s, the reason being that a mining company measures enough reserves for planning purposes for 10 to 20 yrs. Drilling and assaying are costly and it is only used when reserves are running down. Most often, they find much more ore in the process of mining. I won the bet handily but, of course one never collects on these things.

Who is Dr Harris to be making frightening prognostications like this. I’ve found that the biggest “tell” with these people is they never refer to themselves by their discipline. Its alway “a scientists” or “researcher” or “professor”. You can be sure they never asked a mining man or a geologist about this? Climate science is the same. The guy pronouncing on the great extinctions and the like in climate could easily be a sociologist or a social psychologist (which is unabashedly a left wing created science – yup, pretty much like climate science).

“13. Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that DDT and other chlorinated hydrocarbons “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.” Ehrlich warned that Americans born since 1946…now had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would reach 42 years by 1980, when it might level out. (Note: According to the most recent CDC report, life expectancy in the US is 78.8 years).”

Life expectancy is calculated from a particular date, in the 1970 one would give the life expectancy for a person of a certain age. E.g., I was born in 1940 and had a life expectancy of, say, 60 years. Today in 2018 my life expectancy is about 11 years. So in 1970 a life expectancy for a person born in 1945 is calculated from 1970 and would , as stated in the article, be 49 years from the 1970 date, thus such a person would be expected to live until about 2019 or the age of 2019 – 1945 = 74 and not to the age of 49 or a life expectancy of 49 – (1970 -1945) =49 – 25 = 24 more years or until about 1994.